A significant number of pipette tips are used daily in a clinical laboratory. Each pipette tip is used once and then discarded to avoid contamination. Pipette tips generally are positioned for use on the laboratory bench top in racks. Pipette tip racks have rows and columns of wells, each well adapted for receiving a pipette tip. Pipette tips are tapered along their length, and the tips must be placed in the rack wells narrow tip end first.
Refilling pipette tip racks with pipette tips by hand can be a burdensome and time-consuming task. To expedite the process and to ease the burden on laboratory staff, products are offered in which pipette tips come pre-configured in rows and columns corresponding to the rows and columns in the pipette tip rack being used. To refill the rack, an entire lot of pipette tips can be lowered into the wells simultaneously. While more convenient for the laboratory staff, these pre-configured and packaged pipette tips are significantly more expensive than unconfigured pipette tips purchased in bulk, at least in part due to the packaging cost and materials.
The alternative to preconfigured pipette tips is to purchase the pipette tips in bulk at a lower price. The bulk pipette tips often come in large plastic bags that contain hundreds or thousands of pipette tips. While purchasing pipette tips in bulk provides an up-front savings, the result is an increased workload for the laboratory staff because the pipette tips must be loaded into the pipette tip rack manually one at a time. It is not uncommon for laboratory personnel to expend an hour a day refilling pipette tip racks. Thus, there is a need in the industry for an efficient means for loading pipette tips that have been purchased in bulk and that are delivered in large quantity bags into pipette tip racks.